Dejan Kulusevski returns to Tottenham training after 15 months out with knee injury

Dejan Kulusevski has announced his return to full training at Tottenham Hotspur, after more than 15 months out injured.

The Sweden international revealed on his Instagram on Monday evening that “after 477 days I came back to full team training”.

Kulusevski had been increasing his training over the last week, as he works steadily towards a comeback from a difficult knee injury which has kept him out since May 2025.

Kulusevski first injured his right patella during a Premier League game against Crystal Palace on 11 May 2025, and underwent what he later described as “knee patella cartilage surgery” three days later.

But it was a complicated and unusual knee injury, and after months of frustration Kulusevski had to undergo an arthroscopy in March 2026, a minor surgical intervention to clean up the knee.  “Went in and took out what was not (supposed) to be there,” Kulusevski wrote afterwards. “Knee is great now.”

Kulusevski was unable to be part of Sweden’s squad for the 2026 World Cup but he has continued to work hard towards a return.

Roberto De Zerbi discussed Kulusevski’s progress in his press conference on Friday, saying that Kulusevski was “improving day by day” and that he hoped to include him in Tottenham’s Premier League squad list.

“I will be very, very happy to see Kulusevski in (the squad list),” De Zerbi said. “I want to put Kulusevski on the list because he is working very well, very hard. He’s a good guy and he’s a different player. If [Kulusevski] feels good like now (he’ll be in the squad list). He’s improving day by day. It’s great watching him during the season and also because he deserves it. Because he suffered too much for his career for his age, for his level of human. I’m not speaking of him as a player but as a human. He deserves to stay in the list.”

In Kulusevski’s Instagram post from Monday evening, he wrote of his comeback: “Everything is impossible until it is not. Want to see a miracle? Be one.” He posted a photo of a letter in Swedish he received from his family, which referred to “pain, doubt, surgeries and countless hours of training and rehabilitation” he had been through since the injury. “Today you made it back to where you belong.”